Second Battle of Bull Run

The Second Battle of Bull Run was a major American Civil War battle which was fought on 28-30 August 1862.

In June 1862, as Union general George B. McClellan's Peninsula Campaign ground to a halt due to the Seven Days' Battles, President Abraham Lincoln oversaw the formation of the new Army of Virginia, commanded by John Pope. Pope's objective was to attack the Confederate capital of Richmond from the north while McClellan's army withdrew from the peninsula to Washington DC. Pope charged into northern Virginia after the rebel armies, but Confederate general Stonewall Jackson fought him to a standoff at the Battle of Cedar Mountain on 9 August, and the Confederate cavalry general J.E.B. Stuart raided Pope's headquarters and stole $35,000 and his battle uniform. The Confederate armies then disappeared, but Pope found them two days later dug in along a railroad near the old Bull Run battlefield near Manassas, Virginia.

On 29 August, Pope's Union army attacked Jackson's army at the railroad grade, but Jackson's men held the line, hurling rocks when they ran out of ammunition. At 2:00 PM on 30 August, Confederate general James Longstreet led five divisions (25,000 troops) in an attack on the Union flank as the main Union force under Fitz John Porter was devastated during another frontal assault on Jackson's positions. The Union left flank was crushed and the army was forced to retreat to Bull Run, and only a Union rear guard action at the Battle of Chantilly prevented another rout of the Union army. Pope and his army withdrew to Centreville; 25,000 men were killed, wounded, or missing in the second battle at Bull Run, five times the number lost at the first battle. Pope was reassigned to Minnesota to deal with a Sioux uprising, and George B. McClellan was reluctantly brought back to command the Union armies in Virginia.